


Land of Sand and Glass

by HorologiumParadox



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Earth C, Friends to Lovers, Internalized Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Mentions of abuse and trauma, Metaphors, Meteorstuck, Retcom timeline, Slow Burn, Working Through Stuff, longfic, mostly inline with canon, up until
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:47:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24857854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HorologiumParadox/pseuds/HorologiumParadox
Summary: Your name is Dave Strider, and it's a cloudy day. You see the ocean stretching out over the horizon and feel the wind blowing in your favor, but you think it's pointless to make castles in the sand when all the sea ever spits back is death and battered glass.A Davekat longfic about building relationships and letting go of the past, spanning from the start of Dave's three year trip on the meteor up to the founding of Earth C.
Relationships: Dave Strider & Karkat Vantas, Dave Strider/Karkat Vantas
Comments: 10
Kudos: 11





	1. First wave

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, it's me again. Don't worry, I'll be quick here and save the rant for the end notes.
> 
> This is my first "serious" Homestuck fic, and it's a long one, on top of that. This one is heavily loaded with metaphors and emotional shit. I've got everything sort of planned out, but decided to post it more or less as I write the chapters. I might add more tags and change a few details in the description as I progress into the story, but it shouldn't be anything too relevant.
> 
> I'll spare you guys from my writer insecurities in respect to your patience and my self-esteem, but I'll say this: constructive criticism is appreciated! I'm still figuring out the characters and intend to develop them throughout the next chapters, so I hope you stick around and have fun. Anyway, enjoy the reading!

You come from a land with no beaches.

Actually, your city did have beaches, but when you think about the place you grew up in, they are by far not the first images that cross your mind. You lived in a bird box amidst other bird boxes several stories above the concrete.

You often wondered what it'd be like to sink your feet into the soft sand, squeeze in your footprint with your toes. You felt like you would really enjoy the raspy feeling of the grains on your soles, the sun buzzing through your skin from above.

You didn't know how you felt about the ocean, though.

It seemed attractive enough, digging your heels in the shallow water, slowly letting yourself be drawn to the deep until you became drenched in the saline embrace of the waves.

However, even in your mind, you could see the current.

You'd seen what the tide was capable of, how it washed ashore all sorts of life and death from the sea. You'd seen the foam dissipate and reveal a trail of destruction where the last wave had crashed moments before. Whatever had been built there was no longer standing.

You thought of making castles in the sand.

You thought of it, then looked around and saw none standing tall around you, not a single sign or attempt at raising anything up from the washed-out ground. You thought of waves and tides and floods and pulls and drowning and loneliness

and then you thought of sharp blades and sharp shades and when you looked down, the sand was gone.

xxx

“Pull your feet up, you unempathetic slob.”

You look up from your book, choice reading material provided by Rose after several pesterlogs of nagging. A sleep-deprived troll towers above, surrounded by a mess of black hair as angry as the creature itself.

“Dude, there’s an empty chair literally two feet away from you.”

Karkat growls, baring out teeth likely not as intimidating as he believes them to be. “I don’t want to sit on that slab. The couch’s much more comfortable. Now move, dipshit.”

You vaguely feel like defending your ground just out of spite, but decide you’re too tired for that specific pointless endeavor.

Not all of them, though. “Watcha got over there, pissypants?”

He sits down on another cushion, where your legs stood elegantly crossed just a second ago. You take a moment to be surprised he’s not smushed against the other end of the couch before focusing on the deep scowl he’s contorted his face into. “I’m impressed you have the guts to ask about shit that’s none of your fucking business.”

You feel your eye twitch from frustration, and take another moment to be surprised at your own stupidity for expecting a proper answer. “Holy shit, brutal. Do you only have hate-fuck mode or do you actually know how to talk like a normal person? Oh, wait.”

Karkat inflates like he’s just been injected a pumpful of air and pops. “IF YOU  _ THINK  _ YOU’RE  _ WORTH  _ THAT MODE, YOU’VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMING, STRIDER. BECAUSE -- GUESS WHAT, YOU DENSE MOTHERFUCKER? -- I AM  _ NOT _ . A. PERSON!!!”

You feel yourself getting riled up and take a deep breath. Boredom is a powerful thing.

“Kanaya can talk at an acceptable volume, Terezi can actually parse and channel emotion at some extent, and even Vriska can actually articulate more sensibly than you,” you stack up the arguments into a very solid tower, or maybe a wall, and detachedly feel a fear of falling. “I guess it’s not species-specific, man, you should check your birth certificate.”

Karkat looks at you as if picturing colorful ways to dismember you.

“HOW FUCKING RICH OF YOU TO TALK ABOUT  _ MY _ SPECIES. WHY DR. STRIDER, WHY DON’T YOU ENLIGHTEN ME FURTHER WITH YOUR ENDLESS KNOWLEDGE OF UNIVERSAL XENOLOGY SINCE YOU SEEM TO BE OH SO FUCKING EDUCATED ON THE MATTERS OF TROLL BEHAVIOR PATTERNS???”

It takes Karkat’s spit landing on your face to realize just how pathetic this whole cycle is. Karkat is being his usual incommunicable, impossible self, then you poke and prod until he reaches green sun levels of stress, which in turn makes you annoyed as well and you both fight until one of you leave the room stomping your feet and slamming things.

It’s almost familiar, even if completely different.

Karkat is still going on, dripping sarcasm that lacks the bite of directed hate. His anger seems misplaced and aimless, which surfaces as general animosity and screaming. You think it’s pretty funny. If his voice wasn’t so loud, you think you might even be enjoying his spiteful rants.

As it is, though, you already feel like putting a stop to it.

When he stops to gasp a breath, you sink into your seat as much as the hard texture of the couch allows you. “Man, don’t you get tired of abusing your, uh...fuck, air sacs or whatever like that? Is it like a physiological need, like if you don’t shout an average of three hundred words per minute your chatting bulge wilts or something?”

Karkat has a look between outraged and disgusted on when you tilt your head to stare at him. You ponder how badly off you were about the terminology.

“That’s-- eugh,” he seems offended, but at least he’s not blasting off your eardrums anymore. “You’re doing it on fucking purpose, aren’t you, you nook-chafing son of a bitch?” 

Surprisingly, that’s all he says. Karkat huffs out some residual irritation and settles on the sofa, pulling up his legs to rest a notebook on his thighs. He leans sideways on the arm rest and pulls out an alive-looking pen.

You open your book back where you’d stopped, but after a few lines you’re reminded of how uninterested you were in the first place. Your eyes drift across your scleras behind your shades, and you end up quietly observing Karkat.

“What the fuck are you looking at?”

You almost jump at the question, trying to find what gave it away. Karkat’s eyes are still on his notebook, but his hand has stilled just short of the paper. Disturbingly enough, the pen itself hasn’t.

“What?”, you scoff, turning your head towards him more than you strictly need to emphasize your innocence. “Dude, I know I’m hot shit, but you’re obsessed. Let it go, man.”

A new vein pops on his forehead. “Cut the crap, Strider. I could feel your ganderbulbs stuck to my face like witchbugs to a candle.” He stares at you with a mix of irritation and apprehension. “What the fuck is it?”

“I wasn’t gawking at you, idiot, but since you so desperately need my attention...what are you carving into the paper over there like the notebook killed your kids and insulted your mother?” In his hand, the end of the pen is starting to curl up on itself. You allow a mild expression of disgust. “And what the fuck is up with that pen?”

“I brought it from Alternia. Its color depends on what you feed it.” You decide not to ask further.

He politely ignores the other question, and you politely press the matter like the dick you like to pretend not to be. “Sweet. So whatcha writing again?”

“I’m writing your last words,” he bites back. “So far I’ve got ‘watcha writing again’. I think I’m pretty fucking close to the conclusion.”

You wonder why you even bothered. You turn back to your book, thinking about dropping it and giving it another go at your turntables, maybe poke at your inspiration until it bleeds into something usable instead of the piece of shit you thought was good the night before. It’s fucked up to think you manage to be less productive now, just waiting around for three years on a detached chunk of rock in space, away from… away from Earth, when you finally have some measure of peace and quiet in your day, than when you spent days cooped up in your room in the blazing furnace of a Texan summer.

Then again, you hadn’t been entirely alone back then. The ghost of a sunburn licks against your exposed skin. You suddenly feel the urge to look for Rose.

“It’s a diary.”

You’ve almost forgotten what you’d asked him before. “A diary,” you repeat.

“Are your hearing pipes clogged?” he snarls, gritting his teeth before sighing loudly. “Yes, Dave, a diary. For fuck’s sake.”

You can’t help it. “Why Karkat, are you having boy problems?”

“Fuck this.” In less than a second, Karkat slams the notebook closed (with the poor pen-worm inside), stands ramrod-straight and mashes his feet against every tile all the way out the door of the common area.

You stare on at nothing in particular until you realize you’re biting your cheek. Maybe you should go check on Rose. You’re actually a bit hungry, so perhaps you’ll alchemize some cardboard-flavored snack before going after her. Before any of that happens, though, you think you might rest for a bit.

When you close your eyes, you hear the sea. You see the retreating waves, the foam dissipating on a stretch of the shore, and a decaying lump of wet sand.

Before you know it, you’re drowning again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, time for the profuse ramble of excuses!
> 
> Psyche!, not really. Just wanted to make a note that English is not my native language. I experiment quite a bit, but if there's anything agrammatical or wrong in terms of spelling, let me know! That goes for things in discordance with canon or plot holes as well. I usually read everything a hundred times, but some stuff might slip by sometimes.
> 
> Also, if you want to make suggestions or just talk about Homestuck shit in general, I'm on Discord (shinjukusdevil#6393) and Instagram (shinjukusdevil), so just hit me up! I don't bite, promise.


	2. Second wave

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s a peace offering,” you say, in a dull tone, holding out the bowl to him. “C’mon, Karkat, the gesture of using food as bargain for a truce has _gotta_ be universal, don’t recoil from my olive branch here.”

“A truce,” he repeats, baffled. “Do you truly, honestly, genuinely think I’m about to fall for that one?”

You shove your free hand in your pocket, not sure whether you’re slouching so much from exasperation or from exhaustion. At this point, you don’t think they’re much different. “Look, man, I found these orphaned in the kitchen while I was looking for you and thought they might help cool off that hot head of yours so I could actually speak to you. I think Kanaya or Terezi alchemized too much or something, but you don’t have to eat it if you think they’re poisoned or spiked.”

You are lying through your teeth with a deadpan face, and you can tell Karkat knows from the way frowns in confusion. He mercifully doesn’t call you out on it and you find yourself pleasantly surprised at his concession. That’s two the troll’s made in the span of a few days. You’ve got to start catching up.

“What do you want, Dave?” He sighs, sounding as tired as he usually looks.

“Y’know, just making the rounds. Talked to everyone in the meteor and come full circle so now it’s your turn again.” You shrug. “What’s up?”

Karkat scowls at you as if trying to crack a code, teeth peeking from his mouth left slack-open. “Are you seriously so fucking bored that you decided _I_ was the best available option to chit-chat?”

You already regret coming here.

“Yeah, you’re right, my mistake,” you say, turning on your heels.

“Why don’t you just fucking _say_ what you came here for?” Karkat grinds out, gesturing in staggering motions in front of his face.

You’re biting your cheek again.

“Fine.” You keep your hand in your pocket and try to relax again. “The other day, you told me you were writing a diary.”

You see his stance shift and his body close up on itself from the corner of your eye. You scratch your head, half thinking whether Karkat actually deserves your putting yourself through this.

“And I said something dumb.”

“I have other words to describe what you said,” Karkat grumbles, “but yeah, I remember. What about it?”

“Well, uh,” you start. It shouldn’t be that hard, except you know Karkat is an asshole, and maybe you don’t really feel it’s fair that you have to apologize. But you also know it doesn’t excuse the fact you’re not only an asshole, but a jerk as well and perhaps a douchebag too. “I shouldn’t have said that. I mean, it’s something private, right? And I was the one who asked. It fucking sucks to be stuck on this cosmic pebble traveling at fuck knows what speed towards the end of...shit, the end of everything, maybe, so we’re bound to find something to do before we lose our fucking minds. So yeah,” you conclude, clearing your throat. “You’re a whiny little bitch, but that was shitty of me.”

You decide to chance a glance at Karkat. He’s leaning on the wall a few steps down the hallway you two decided to obstruct for this mutilated attempt at a conversation. He looks skeptical, but his fists aren’t clenched.

“Careful, Strider.” He narrows his eyes, but his voice hasn’t changed from its wary tone. “It almost sounds like you’re apologizing.”

You grit your teeth before you can stop it. “And it almost sounds like I already regret it because you’re a giant prick and you don’t even know what that means.”

Karkat snorts and steps up to you. It seems like stomping is his standard pace for walking. He grabs the bowl of Alternian snacks from your hand with both of his, claws curling around the plastic.

“I can learn from context, you imbecile. Anyway, you’re late.” Karkat pops a disgusting-looking delicacy into his mouth, grating it in seconds with a disturbing crunch. You briefly wonder if there wasn’t a single other fucking species of beings in the whole vast paradox space that wasn’t as weird as trolls to be stuck with, but well, this is what you lucky kids get. “I couldn’t find shit to write about everyday, so I just tossed the diary aside and ended up forgetting about it. I think I’m going to use it for something else. Maybe dish out death threats and paper sheets and leave it on the floor for you to slip and fall.”

You scoff. “Weak. I’m a god, remember? Save the paper for when you shit yourself in our last battle.”

“Oh what’s that, now?” Karkat frowns, eyes locked on yours. “If I so recall, _our_ team _killed_ the final boss of our section and _won_ . We were supposed to be fucking fine, swimming in the throes of the Ultimate Reward, and _yet_ , here we are, mopping up the absolute carnival of shit you fuckheads made of _your_ game!” He’s yelling, but it’s standard Karkat volume. “So yeah, perhaps you’re the one who’s gonna need the ass wiping after all.”

“Man, you’re not helping your case. I mean, even if you won your session, you’ve gotta be pretty fucking incompetent to create a universe as fucked as ours. Even I have to congratulate you for that. Way to go, dude,” you finish, with a couple of claps.

Karkat is gritting his teeth and scrunching up his whole body. Maybe the food sacrifice is working, though, because he seems to back down from further escalating the wrathladder. “Go fuck yourself in the deep pits of the garbling magma of hell, Strider.”

You don’t feel guilty anymore, so you flick your hand under the bowl in Karkat’s hand just in time to distract him from seeing your smile as you walk away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey!
> 
> This one's a shortie, because I just didn't want the first chapter to be too long. I am working on this fic again, though, so I will try really, really hard to post more often from now on... Hopefully, once a week, but I might have a burst of inspiration and finish it all in one week. Who knows? I sure as fuck don't.
> 
> Comments and constructive criticism are always welcome! Grammar/orthographic corrections are encouraged, too.


End file.
